


Find Me Home, or Life at Plumfield with Pepper’s Boys (and Girls)

by ruanyu



Category: Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Artist Steve Rogers, Awesome Pepper Potts, Awesome Phil Coulson, But she pretends to be one, Clint Barton & Steve Rogers Friendship, Clint Barton Feels, Clint Barton Is a Good Bro, Friendship, Gen, Homelessness, Loki & Steve Rogers friendship, Loki (Marvel) Feels, Loki and Steve are roommates, Loki and Thor Are Not Related, Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Or not-enemy-ship, Phil Coulson Has the Patience of a Saint, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Pepper Potts, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, School for Troubled Teens, Self-Esteem Issues, Steve Feels, Steve Has Issues, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson Friendship, selective mutism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-16 22:14:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15447012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruanyu/pseuds/ruanyu
Summary: “Excuse me sir, is this Plumfield?” Steve asked. He was standing outside the gates, looking at the man who had been walking around in the garden. The man had rumpled brown hair, a mild scholarly look and a book in his hand, his thumb inserted to hold his place.“Yes,” the man replied. “Who sent you?”“Mr. Coulson. I…I have a letter for the lady.”  Steve clutched the paper in his pocket. Coulson had said they would let him inside if he showed the letter, but now he was here he wasn’t sure they would. He glanced down at faded grimy jeans, tugged at his seen-better-days coat, not wanting to see the man’s face when he told him to go away. The gate squealed, and Steve looked up, startled by the sound.“Go on up and ring the door,” said the man. He gave Steve an encouraging smile.In which Steve arrives at Plumfield. You don't have to have read Little Men to follow this.





	Find Me Home, or Life at Plumfield with Pepper’s Boys (and Girls)

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Written in an on/off disorganised fashion. If you catch any mistakes, let me know and I'll fix them.  
> ETA: I've edited this since posting it because it wasn't working for me the way it was. The sections I deleted might come back later, or not, depending on where this goes from here.

I paint the pictures of the oceans I'll never see  
I'll hold a candle through the darkness so I believe  
There is a future fine and narrow, find me home  
I paint the pictures of emotions I'll never own

\- of Verona, Paint the Pictures

 

 

“Excuse me sir, is this Plumfield?” Steve asked. He was standing outside the gates, looking at the man who had been walking around in the garden. The man had rumpled brown hair, a mild scholarly look and a book in his hand, his thumb inserted to hold his place. “Yes,” the man replied. “Who sent you?”

“Mr. Coulson. I…I have a letter for the lady.” Steve clutched the paper in his pocket. Coulson had said they would let him inside if he showed the letter, but now he was here he wasn’t sure they would. He glanced down at faded grimy jeans, tugged at his seen-better-days coat, not wanting to see the man’s face when he told him to go away. The gate squealed, and Steve looked up, startled by the sound.

“Go on up and ring the door,” said the man. He gave Steve an encouraging smile. Steve walked in, hesitated, and when the man nodded, went towards the large house, already familiar to him from the photograph he had been staring at for the last hour on the bus. He went up the steps to the front door, glancing at the window. The curtains were drawn, but he could see the shadows of people moving about and hear the low hum of voices. He pressed the doorbell, then took a step back, squaring his shoulders. Coulson had said he would be welcome here. He’d promised. And he didn’t think Coulson was the type to promise something he was not sure of.

Steve had been sitting in his usual spot the day he first met Coulson. He’d laid out his his sketches carefully in a row and then sat cross-legged on the ground and picked up his drawing pad — he’d learned early on that the people who sometimes lingered liked to watch him draw. It proved that the sketches were really his own.

He had been trying to capture an almost familiar face without a photograph to go from when Coulson appeared. It had taken Steve longer than it should have to notice that the passerby who had paused a while ago was still there. He tensed, glanced up, then relaxed slightly when he saw that his audience was a man in the suit — just another bored pencil-pusher reluctant to head back to his office after the lunch hour.

“Sir?” he said, tentatively. “Would you like to buy one of the sketches?”

The man turned to look at him, gaze strangely direct. Not many looked at Steve, really looked at him the way you would look at someone you wanted to talk to or to get to know. “Maybe.” The man smiled a little. “They’re very reasonably priced.”

Steve frowned. The suit was mocking him. There was no price on the sketches. Steve found the policy of pay what you think it’s worth usually worked for him. Most people responded well to someone assuming they were generous. Sure, some misers paid what he thought was too little, but most paid enough, and some paid more than he would have dared put as a price.

“Maybe I could sketch you?” he asked, after a moment.

The suit considered. “Yes,” he said, after a moment. “I would like that.” He brushed over his remaining hair. “And perhaps you could be a little…er…more kind than accurate about my hairline?”

Steve smiled at that. “Sure,” he said.

Steve turned to face him, began to sketch out the shape of his face, to line up his features. He’d learned to draw his own way, building up his sketches from countless silver fine lines, covering the light grey in bolder and more assured strokes as he felt his way to the right shapes and curves and angles and shadows.

“How long have you been doing this?” the man asked.

Steve didn’t let himself falter at the question. Sometimes people talked while he sketched. It was like what his mother used to say about hairdressers. You had to master the art of replying without saying too much. “A while now,” he said.

“You look a little young to have been on the streets for a while,” the man said, after a moment.

Steve gripped his pencil too hard and had to consciously relax his fingers. “I’ve always been undersized,” he said.

“I said young, not small,” the man said, gently.

“Not that young either,” Steve said, then added, “I can look after myself.” The last part came out too sharp and antagonistic, and Steve waited for the man to take offence.

“Yes, I see that,” the man said, after a terse moment.

“Sorry,” Steve said, because they both knew why he had bristled at the question, and he wanted the money for the sketch.

“Don’t apologise,” the man said. “I should not have been so nosy.” Steve glanced up at him and saw there was a smile on his face, small and contained somehow, but crinkling at the corners of his eyes, more visible there. He thought he should include the smile in the sketch, along with the hair.

When the sketch was done, the man thanked him and gave him more than he had expected. “It’s good work,” he said, and smiled again, the same contained smile. “Thank you for giving me my hair back.”

The second time the suit came by and lingered by his sketches, Steve was less friendly. No one wanted two sketches by a street artist. No one except maybe a man who liked undersized boys. Steve kept his eyes fixed on his drawing and pretended he hadn’t noticed the man hanging around. The man didn’t press him to talk. He glanced over the rows of sketches, stopping at the new ones, then quietly left some coins on the ground, turning to leave.

Steve picked up the coins. “Hey,” he said, sharply.

The suit turned and looked surprised when he saw Steve holding out the money to him. He frowned. “Why?”

“I’m not a beggar,” Steve said. It had been his first rule when he started this thing. He’d broken the rule a few times, but this man didn’t have to know that. “If you’re paying, you take one of the sketches.”

The man thought about this, then gave a small nod. He walked back to the sketches and picked up one that was of a country house with ivy covering one wall. Steve had seen the house in a magazine and carefully torn out the page, keeping it in his pocket until he had the house on paper. “This one?” the man asked, as though Steve might say it was not for sale. Steve nodded warily and the suit dug out his wallet and handed him more money. Too much money, really. Not that Steve would ever say that. He put everything into his art, spent all the time he had on drawing and any extra money that didn’t go on food on materials. He knew his work was good; he didn’t do false humility.

“I know of a house that looks very similar to this,” the man said, too off-hand, once Steve had taken the rest of the money. “Not too far from here.”

Steve backed away. He kept his eyes on the man, sitting back down. He was not so easy to push when he was sitting down. He’d learned this the hard way.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Steve said, in a tone that warned against argument.

The man nodded. “Good. Because I’m not asking you to come with me.”

Steve frowned, thrown off balance.

“I think you would enjoy going to see Plumfield though,” the man said.

“Plumfield?” Steve repeated.

“The house. It’s a special academy run by friends of mine.”

“Special academy? You mean, for like, gifted children?” Steve had heard the “you’re gifted” line before. It had never lead to anything good.

“Not necessarily,” the man said. “It’s special because it’s not for…those who have regular families.”

“Oh,” Steve said. He frowned. “One of those troubled teens places?”

The man’s brows quirked. “I wouldn’t put it quite that way my self. But yes.”

Steve considered the man. “Are you from the church? Or like, a temple?”

The man was startled into an almost laugh. “Uh. No,” he said. “I work in an office.” He glanced down at his suit, raised his brows. “As you might expect.”

“Then why?” Steve asked.

“Because…I think you would do well there,” the man said. “And if you don’t like it, you can always leave.”

Steve shook his head. It was never that simple.

The man seemed to accept this. “Thanks for this,” he said, indicating the sketch. He hesitated, then added: “My name is Phil Coulson. In case you decide to go, give them my name.”

The suit — Coulson — didn’t come back for a week after that. For several of those days, unseasonal stinging rain sent people under umberalls scurrying down the street with their heads ducked. Steve stayed huddled in the doorway he’d claimed and watched people dashing into buildings where no one would ask what they were doing inside. It was still too early to spread his sleeping bag. Someone might come by and move him along.

He was glad he hadn’t given in to temptation when a policeman did come to move him along some time later. He picked up his things obediently and shuffled away because arguing was a waste of time. He went to another place not too far from an art gallery that he liked looking into but found that they had installed spikes there very recently. He spent the night near the library instead, huddled against the wall, because there wasn’t enough space for his sleeping bag.

The next morning was overcast. Steve thought about setting up his sketches, and glanced at the grey sky.

“It looks like there will be more rain,” said Coulson. “It would be a shame if your sketches were ruined.”

“What d’you want?” Steve said, warily. Because this, whatever this was, was not normal.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Coulson said.

Steve felt the tension in his shoulders which were around his ears and slowly brought them down. He tried not to look what he was inside: afraid, uncertain. Bucky had said looking that way would make him more of a target.

“I just wanted to show you this.” Coulson reached in his briefcase, held out a glossy photograph. It was of the house, of course. Stone walls, ivy-covered, sprawling square house, with this large tree just perfect for climbing in front touching the upper windows, and the setting sun making everything golden and impossibly perfect. Idyllic. That was the word.

Steve did not reach out to take the photograph. He ran a ragged sleeve under his nose, tried to ease the tightness in his chest by coughing. The rattling sound made Coulson really look at him, everything about him sharpening somehow. “You know you should not be out here in this weather with that cough,” he said.

Steve raised his eyebrows in a silent “really,” giving up the polite act.

“Don’t give me that look,” Coulson said. “Not when you’re refusing to do anything about your situation.”

Steve wanted to turn away and walk back to the library, to crawl into the sleeping bag he could not unroll on the street now that it was light. “I’m doing my best,” he said, stiffly. His shoulders were arched up again. He relaxed them, tried to take a calming breath, but had to cough once more.

“Yes,” Coulson said, calmly. “You are. But this shouldn’t be it for you. You deserve better.”

Steve glanced at the house in the photograph again, despite himself. Coulson had not put it back in the briefcase. “Here,” he said, gently. “Take it.”

Steve didn’t move for a full minute, thinking through the implications, then he reached out, carefully did not look at the too perfect house before putting it in his rucksack. “I’ll just use it for a sketch,” he said, chin slightly lifting in challenge.

“Ok,” Coulson said. He didn’t sound disappointed, just very neutral.

Steve turned to leave, and that was when Coulson held out a hand in the universal symbol for “wait.” “Before you go, just give me a few minutes to talk to you about it,” he said. “Here, or in the closest cafe over your preferred hot drink. I won’t try to buy the drink for you unless you would accept that. I’ll buy another sketch instead, if you’d allow me.”

The thing was he said all this as though he invited homeless people to have a cosy little chat all the time, and then he just stood there and waited for Steve to formulate an answer, as though he had all the time in the world.

“What do you do?” Steve said, after too many minutes had passed.

Coulson understood the question. “I’m a lawyer, I’m afraid,” he said.

“What…what type of lawyer?”

“Defence,” Coulson said, after a minute. “I used to be a public defender, but I have my own firm now.”

Steve tilted his head. “You mean you…you have money?”

Coulson didn’t smile, considering the question, then answering matter of factly. “Well. Yes. I’d say I’m relatively well off.”

Steve nodded. “Hot chocolate, then,” he said, somewhere between cautious and pretend-casual.

He could always run, he thought. He might be an undersized fearful little runt but he was fast, at least for short distances.

Steve curled his cold hands around the hot mug, breathing in the rich chocolate smell. There was cream on top too, so much that it was difficult to drink without getting it on the tip of your nose. He thought the woman who made it had added a little too much. Her eyes had been all soft when she looked at him and she’d called him “sweetheart,” the way older women who bought his sketches sometimes did. Empty nest syndrome, he’d always thought, but this woman had been too young for that.

“Here,” Coulson said, seeing his dilemma with the cream and handing him a teaspoon. Steve took it with an automatic “thanks” and stirred the cream into the hot liquid. Coulson waited until he had taken a few sips, the silence comfortable somehow, before he started speaking. “Plumfield is run by friends of mine, as I said. The woman who runs the place was in law school with me. Her husband is an inventor with too many patents to count. He used to be in the arms business and Pepper used to be a prosecutor. Some time ago, they moved out of the city to set up this academy. Occasionally, I’ve alerted them to children who might…be a good fit for them.”

Steve considered this. “And you think I might…be a good fit?” he echoed, carefully.

Coulson nodded. “I think you would be a perfect fit.”

Steve frowned. “You don’t know me,” he said.

Coulson paused. “You sign your sketches,” he said. Steve tensed, setting his mug down, feet on the floor, ready to push away. Coulson held up his hands. “Hear me out?” Steve just looked at him, every muscle tense. Coulson spoke carefully. “Your mother was mentioned in an article about medical debt. The paper said she had a son who was taken into care.”

“Some of the debt was because of me,” Steve said, after a moment. “I was…I was a sickly child.” Sickly, that was the word that had been used to describe his various ailments. Sometimes, worse, they said he was “delicate.” As though he was not expected to last long. But it was his mother who had not lasted. He struggled to put this into words. “She couldn’t have paid them back, not ever. She tried, really tried.”

“I know,” Coulson said, quietly. And it didn’t sound like someone just saying something to placate him.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Steve put his hands back around the mug. “So this is how you find them? Those you send to Plumfield?”

“Sometimes,” Coulson said. “Yes.”

“And…and have your friends always taken those you send?”

“Yes,” Coulson said, simply, without trying to convince him.

Steve drank another sip of his hot chocolate. “Uhm, if I go…just to see…” he stopped there and looked down at his mug because he wasn’t sure what he was trying to ask. “You said I should give your name?”

Coulson nodded. “Somehow, I don’t think you’d be willing to get in the car and go there with me.” It wasn’t a question, but Steve gave a firm shake of the head anyway.   
Coulson smiled slightly then reached into his jacket pocket, retrieving an envelope. “Then take this letter with you.” He pushed it across to Steve. The cursive writing on the back spelled out the name Pepper Potts, but the envelope was unsealed. “You can read it if you want,” Coulson said.

Steve took the letter carefully, not wanting to smudge the pristine white with his less than clean graphite smudged hands. He slid it in his last empty sketch pad in the rucksack. He would read it if he decided to go, but not now, not while Coulson was watching. He curled his hands around the hot mug again, not wanting to finish the drink. He looked out of the window at the grey dreary day, and had to swallow to force down the feeling of loneliness, of wanting. He wanted to go, wanted to imagine he could live there, in that perfect, idyllic place.

“I promise you, Steve, this will be a good thing,” Coulson said, quietly.

Steve quickly made his expression perfectly blank, the way he’d practiced by copying Bucky’s habitual stony expression, but when he looked over at the suit, he saw that Coulson was not looking at him at all, but out of the window. It was only when Steve picked up his mug again that Coulson turned back to him, and smiled a little, the smile that crinkled around his eyes. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope I don’t see you around here again,” he said.

Steve clutched the letter as the door opened, squaring his shoulders and standing as tall as he could.

The man who opened the door had a bald head and sharp grey eyes behind spectacles. He looked over at the letter Steve was silently holding out. “Steve Rogers?” he said, reaching out to take the letter.

Steve mumbled a yes sir. The man nodded, scanning over the words on the envelope. “I’m Jarvis,” he said, and stood to the side, gestured into the hallway. “Please, do come in. You can sit down here while I take this to Ms Potts.”

Steve walked into the hall and perched on the wing-backed chair tucked into the corner. He could see an open door further down the hall which looked to open onto a living room with a large fireplace and he could smell what he thought was fresh bread. When he turned back to sit straight in the chair, there was a wiry boy with a shaved head on the steps looking at him. Steve hadn’t heard him come down, hadn’t heard him make a single sound. “You’re new,” the boy said. It wasn’t quite a question.   
Steve hesitated. “Don’t know if I’m…if I’ll be allowed to stay yet.”

The boy nodded at this. “Me neither,” he said. He considered Steve for a moment. “Coulson find you?”

“Yes,” Steve said. “He wrote me a letter for Ms Potts. Did you get here the same way?”

The boy gave a short shake of the head and and Steve noticed the hearing aids. “Nah,” he said, and didn’t elaborate. Steve glanced down, saw that the boy was holding a bread roll. To Steve’s embarrassment, his belly rumbled again and he pressed his arms across his middle as though that would stop it. The boy noticed. “Here,” he said, coming closer and thrusting the roll at Steve.

Steve startled, then reached out, fingers around the still warm bread. “Uh…thank you,” he said. He knew it was out of pity, but he wasn’t proud enough to refuse the gift.

  
The boy shrugged, casual, pretending it was nothing. Something about him reminded Steve of Bucky.

“Stole it from the kitchen,” the boy said, nonchalantly. “Can steal some more.”

“Don’t let Maria hear you say that, Clint.” They both turned to look at the man who had just entered the house, the same man who had let Steve in through the gates. His tone was amused rather than chiding, but the boy glowered and then retreated back up the stairs, watching the man all the while, suspicious rather than wary. Steve frowned. The boy’s reaction didn’t bode well for this being a good place.

The man watched him leave, giving a soft sigh. “Stupid of me,” he muttered, to himself. Then he turned to look at Steve. “Waiting on Pepper?”

Steve nodded. “Yes sir,” he said.

“Come, I’l take you,” the man said. “She doesn’t usually leave people waiting this long.” He paused, then held out his hand, giving a wry smile. “And I forgot to introduce myself earlier. I’m Bruce Banner. I teach science here.”

Steve shook hands and gave his name, standing up to follow him. They had not reached wherever they were going when a red-haired woman appeared, walking towards them, a slight frown on her face. She wore her hair in a french braid and was dressed in jeans and a green blouse.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” she said, holding her hand out to Steve. “I’m Pepper Potts.”

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Steve said, because he might not exactly be pleased but his mother had taught him manners.

The woman exchanged a speaking glance with Banner, the kind of startled brow raised glance that said that was unexpected, as though the idea of manners was surprising in someone like him. Steve pretended not to notice. He had practise being slightly oblivious, more naive than he should be. Good boy doing his best always sold more than too streetwise for his own good, and he knew he could pull it off.

Potts gave him a small smile. “How about warming up by the fire a little while we talk?”

Pepper thought she would be used to this by now, the way they always looked when they first came, enclosed within the learned wary stillness that would not leave them for weeks, sometimes months. This one was worse than some but better than others; he was underfed but not as skeletal as Loki had once been, and he was guarded with her, but nowhere near as shut down as Natasha still was.

Steve had followed her obediently into the sitting room, and sat down by the fire, stretching out his hands to the warmth as she talked to him about the school. She soon saw that he had a disarmingly adult demeanour — none of the anxious movements, the tells she’d noticed in some of the others. And then there were his impeccable manners. Pepper had some experience with defiant silence and with monosyllabic churlishness, but she soon saw that with this one she would have to be more attentive because of that careful politeness. It took her longer than it should have to notice how he curled a thin hand over his mouth when his chest was rattled by dry painful coughs, waiting for the pauses, avoiding coughing so that he would not interrupt her as she was speaking.

She had to pause to gather herself so her voice would not betray her. She took the opportunity to call for some tea with honey. When it came he looked surprised and then thanked her, called her ma’am again. She could already guess what Bruce would say — “this one had a mother once.” Most of the others had been the ones who slipped through the cracks, orphans and runaways, certainly no one with parents who had once cared enough to teach them manners, or to encourage their hobbies.

In his letter, Coulson had used words like “talented” and “intelligent” and “polite” as though Pepper needed convincing to take the boy, which she might have been angry about, had she not known that the words were not for her — she knew Steve would have read the letter first.

“Do you have any questions for me?” she asked, when she’d covered the basics. She had tried to keep her tone level, efficient, even lawyerly: she could imagine this one bristling at anything that came too close to pity.

He thought about it for a moment. “What if…what if it doesn’t work out?” he said.

“In what way would it not work out?” Pepper asked, quietly. He had a habit of keeping his chin tilted down, guarding too expressive guileless blue eyes behind dirty blonde hair, and she could not quite read his expression.

He gave a half-shrug, bony shoulder pressing against faded shirt. “If I don’t fit in here,” he said, low, like he doesn’t want to consider failing. “If I can’t do the work.”

Pepper didn’t reassure him that there was nothing which would make her tell him to leave. None of them had ever believed her reassurances when they came easily like that, and she didn’t think this one would either. “If you disappoint us, you mean?” she said, instead, and had to work hard to keep her face neutral when he flinched slightly.

“Yeah. Yes, ma’am.” He was sitting carefully straight in his best posture now, had raised his head to meet her gaze, seemingly trusting blue eyes steady.

She took a slow breath. “We talk about why, and what you can do to make up for it, and how you will never do it again.” He frowned slightly, clearly judging a stern talking to be an unrealistic punishment for his future disappointments. She tilted her head. “What did your mother do?”

He blinked owlishly. “She…she…told me to go to my room sometimes.”

Pepper made a hmm sound. She was glad that this one had a mother and that she had cared. “I’ve never been a mother. I’m not going to try to be yours,” she said, meeting his cautious eyes, seeing him understand. “I’m going to expect you to be responsible.” The little bit of firmness she put into her voice went a long way to easing his tension, and he relaxed slightly as he nodded his understanding. It was only when she saw him relax that she realised just how tense he had been.   
She would need to learn his tells, she thought, as she had with the others, though they might not be as obvious.

The inventor was not what Steve had expected. He lounged against the door frame and looked at Steve like he was an exhibit. “So this is the new one?” Steve glanced from the man in the grimy t-shirt to the lady who had told him to call her Pepper, saw the tiny line between her brows. “Tony, say hello to Steve,” she said.

“Hello to Steve,” Stark said, promptly, coming forward into the room. Steve wanted to smile but had to still the edges of his mouth because Ms Potts did not look amused. Stark’s brows quirked. “This one will be one of your devotees,” he told her with amusement. “He won’t even smile without your permission. You’ll have to pretend to find everything I do amusing from now on, Pep.”

She shook her head. “I don’t have devotees,” she said, addressing Steve. Stark sat down next to her on the couch, arm stretching across the back without touching her. “Oh you do,” he said. “Or what would you call me?”

To Steve’s surprise, Ms Potts went just a tiny little bit pink. “Now you’re being embarrassing,” she said. Stark smiled, bright and wicked and pleased with himself, as though this had been a wonderful compliment, then he turned his head and looked at Steve then, more intent than before. “Coulson said you’re an artist,” he said.

Steve hesitated, then nodded. “Yes sir.”

“Sir!” Stark said, brows flying up. “I don’t recall having been knighted.”

Steve felt the stiffness in his shoulders, tried consciously to relax, to appear at ease. “Mr Stark?” he said, winced internally at the uncertain quaver, the uplift that marked it as a question.

“We use first names here,” Ms Potts interjected. But Stark, looking at him too carefully, too directly, titled his head, gave a slight shrug. “I’ll answer to mister, just don’t sir me. Deal?”

Steve nodded, relieved. He would not have been able to call the man Tony, anymore than he could call the woman Pepper. “Deal.”

Stark waved a hand in a enough-of-that gesture. “Peggy will be pleased,” he said. “About the art thing.”

“Peggy is the art teacher here,” Ms Potts told Steve. “She’s struggled a little convincing the students of the relevance of her subject.”

An art teacher, Steve thought. He would have someone to talk to about his art. This time, the smile that broke for a quick moment was genuine, and he saw Potts briefly look relieved, as though she had wondered whether he knew how to really smile.

“This will be your room,” said Ms Potts, at the end of the school tour, opening the door to a wide room decorated in navy blue and white with an understated feel. There were two beds, one neatly made, and the other with the duvet pushed together in a crumpled mess at the foot. There was little by way of personal effects that would tell Steve anything about the other person who had had the room to themselves.

“Your roommate is called Loki.” Ms Potts glanced at the unmade bed, giving Steve a small smile. “He…he’s been through some tough times.”

Steve nodded. He went to put his rucksack on the neat bed, lowering the heavy weight from his shoulder. Unconsciously, he rubbed at the ache there, wondered whether he would have to leave again, become used to that weight pulling him down.

As though she’d read his mind, Ms Potts said: “I hope you’ll give us a chance, Steve. I think you might be happy here.”

He looked at her and tried to look appropriately grateful, so that he would not reveal the dread that had settled in him, the knowing that this would not last. Nothing good ever lasted, in his experience. “I think I will too,” he said, carefully giving her his best good boy smile.

She appeared satisfied by that, smiling back at him. “I’ll leave you to settle in then,” she said. “You’ll hear the dinner bell soon, and you can meet the others.”

Steve entered the dining room immediately after the bell had been run to find the long table set with plates and glasses but with no one there. Standing at the door, he hesitated, thinking to come back after a few minutes.

“You’re not too early. The horde will be here soon.”

Steve turned. The person who had spoken had been standing at the window looking out. He turned to face Steve, kept his hands pushed into his pockets. “I’m Sam,” he said, and paused, as though assessing Steve’s possible reaction.

“Hey. I’m…”

“Steve, I know,” said Sam.

Steve held out his own hand ignoring Sam’s suspicious look. Sam huffed, then shook hands. “So what are you in here for?” he said.

Steve frowned. “Sorry?”

Sam gave him a patient look. “Dead parents? Bad parents? Delinquent? Runaway?”

“Oh. Uhm. Dead mother. I’ve been…homeless for a while, ” Steve said.

Sam tilted his head. “Me too,” he said.

He was about to say something else when someone with too long dark hair came into the room. The boy — it took Steve a second to determine he was in fact a boy — stopped a few steps away, pushed his headphones down around his neck and gave Steve a flatly antagonistic look. “I don’t share,” he said.

It took Steve longer than it should have to connect the dots. “You’re Loki.”

“And you’re the artist,” Loki said. He was incongruously pale, like he had not been outside all summer, with daubs of bluish shadow under his eyes.

Steve tilted his head. “I didn’t choose the room,” he said, because he might have accepted this was temporary, but it didn’t mean he wouldn’t fight for his place.

Loki gave a little unamused laugh, barely more than a breath. “He’ll be their new favourite,” he said, addressing Sam. “Blonde and blue-eyed and little and a fucking artist. Not a criminal like us.”

Sam’s shoulders hunched. “Speak for yourself,” he muttered.

Loki’s mouth twisted, briefly. He looked weary, somehow, under the posturing.

“Look, it doesn’t have to be this way…” Steve said, in his best peace-making voice.

Sam rolled his eyes. “Don’t try to reason with Loki,” he said. “First rule you gotta learn around here.”

Loki smiled unpleasantly. “Yeah, Stevie, don’t reason with me,” he mocked. He pushed the headphones back up around his ears, tinny music audible again, and took the seat at the end of the table.

Sam looked at Steve. “You think you know, don’t you?” he said.

Steve blinked. “No.”

“I was never charged,” Sam said. “And if I’d looked like you, I’d never have been arrested either.”

Steve couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said, inadequately.

Sam frowned and said nothing, but the tension in his shoulders relaxed a little.

Mrs Potts came in soon after, followed by several others. Clint, the shaved head boy, was among the little crowd, peeling off directly to take another seat on the table, as far away from Loki as possible. Steve gravitated towards him. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Clint replied, subdued, head down, looking at the rubiks cube in his hands that he was twisting and turning with savage little twists.

Steve hesitated, but there was no other way to know than to ask. “I…you’ve been at this school a while right?”

“Not that long,” Clint said. He frowned down the the cube. “Like a month, maybe?”

“Is…is it a good place?” Steve said.

Clint’s brows furrowed. He considered the unsolved cube in his hands. “Better than some,” he said, finally, not very usefully.

Sam came over and sat down on Clint’s other side. “You training up to be a genius, Barton?” He indicated the cube with a thrust of his chin. Clint replied with a vulgar swear word, muttered quietly enough the Ms Potts didn’t hear. “Dr Foster,” he said then, explaining, like the swearing had been a prelude.

“Ah, so she thinks you can be a genius,” Sam said, but the ribbing was friendly, without the bristling hostility that Loki had brought forth.

Clint gave an unamused laugh. “Can’t do much with a kid who can barely read,” he said.

Steve couldn’t help his startled look at this revelation, and saw Clint somehow hunch into himself even as he was broadcasting how he did not care. He frowned, unhappy to have given offence. “I didn’t mean…”

“I know,” Clint said, cutting him off, not wanting the usual excuses.

Steve, uncomfortable, glanced back at Loki, who had not moved since he sat down. There was something eerie, something discomfiting about his tense posture, the way he had tilted his head, chin to chest, veiled himself from them with a wing of dark hair.

If this was a good place, Steve thought, the students he had met so far did not believe it yet.

The rest of the students began to take their seats around the dinner table as Ms Potts lead them into the room. Clint and Sam filled Steve in on who the others were, initially providing little more than names and sometimes an off-colour comment. First was Darcy, purple-haired and irreverent, at least in her fashion choices. “Loud mouth,” was Clint’s assessment. “Too much for the foster homes,” said Sam. “They like girls who are pretty in pink, not ones with pink hair.”

Clint frowned. “That’s purple,” he said. “You colourblind?”

After a brief detour into which colours colourblind people confused, they told him about Peter, sitting next to Ms Potts, the one who talked with her most, the only one who seemed to instigate conversations.

“Earnest,” was Sam’s one-word assessment. “Bootlicker,” Clint countered. “And teacher’s pet. He’s so desperate to be liked it’s pathetic.”

“I heard his parents gave him up,” Sam said. “Maybe why.”

“Keep your amateur psychology to yourself,” Clint replied, sourly.

Next to Peter sat Wanda, hollow-eyed, cultivating a dark broodiness. She was moving the food around in her plate. She stabbed at peas one by one with her fork, and slid them off into her mouth with a strange little grimace, as though she did not want the food touching her lips. Ms Potts watched her, unobtrusively, looking worried.

“Anorexic,” said Clint.

“Orthorexic,” Sam corrected.

Clint shrugged. “Same difference.”

“Not really,” Sam said. “See, orthorexic people…”

A blonde boy came in mid-way through Sam’s explanation about ten minutes after everyone had started eating, muttering a barely-audible sorry in Ms Pott’s general direction. He was identified as Pietro. “He’s a runner,” said Clint. “He’s good.” It was unqualified praise, neutral judgement.

“His parents were journalists,” said Sam. “Both of them. Died trying to be heroes, filming a war documentary.”

The last one on the table was a a pale redhead, sitting opposite Loki, just as removed from the rest as he was and possibly more so.

“That one doesn’t talk,” said Sam, tilting his head at her. “No one knows what’s up with her.”

“Natasha,” Clint said. He paused. “Yeah. She has selective mutism,” he said it carefully, as though he was copying a term he’d heard. “It hasn’t been very selective recently though.”

Natasha ate with a steady mechanical air, chewing her food with a strange deliberateness, as though she had timed how long she should chew before she swallowed, all the while looking into the middle distance, at no one at all.

“Welcome to our big happy family,” said Sam.

Steve crawled into the bed, made sure his back was to the wall, wondering if Loki would mock him for keeping on the night light. He kept his eyes trained on the door, ears picking up the faintest sound, conditioned to sleep lightly. Sometime later, he drifted slowly into half-sleep, still present enough to hear when the door squealed slightly as it opened, and Loki slipped inside. He said nothing, closing the door behind him, perhaps assuming Steve was already asleep. Steve kept his eyes closed, concentrated on breathing evenly.

He woke up before dawn to muffled soft whimpering. Sitting up in his warm bed, he looked over in the dim light to where Loki curled in an impossibly tight fetal position. He had his head turned to the side, long hair falling messily over the pillow, arm raised so he was tucking his chin against his upper arm, hiding half his face from view. 

The long hair and the position, curled in on himself like that, reminded Steve of Bucky. Steve cautiously walked over, saw Loki’s eyes were closed tight, the faint whimpering unconscious, like the mentally pained sounds Steve had heard from the elder folks whose minds were gone, very low sounds to occupy the mind, accompanied by self-rocking, arms tight around knees. “Loki?” he whispered.

That was all it took to make Loki start awake, his eyes flying open to reveal vivid green clouded momentarily with confusion before he jerked upright swiftly, turning away, shame stiffening his shoulders.

Loki had not come from the streets, Steve had learned. He could have guessed that, from the way Loki held himself and the way he acted, had known it even before Clint had told him that Loki had been at a prestigious boarding school for the very very rich, before he had done something terrible enough that his parents sent him away, cast him out here, with the troubled runaways and criminals, with people he must believe were far beneath him in station. According to Clint, Loki’s parents never visited and had never sent letters. His resentment made some sense, in that context.

Steve hesitated. “Are you…okay?” he said, uselessly.

Loki released a small breath. “Ask them to move you,” he said. “Sam and Clint’s room is large enough for a third.”

Steve frowned slightly. “Why would I do that?”

Loki arched one brow. “Because I don’t want you here,” he said.

Steve tried to smile. Loki, coming back to wakeful spite, was more transparent in his acidity than he thought. “You didn’t turn off my night light,” he said, for the room was cast in faint gold shadow from the lamp on his bedside table.

Loki was momentarily silent. Steve understood that sharing was too much to hope for at this point.

“It wasn’t for you,” Loki said, finally, and Steve nodded. Loki regarded him in the faint light, gave a small huff of breath. “Don’t do that,” he said, irritably.

Steve frowned. “Do what?”

“Look…concerned like that,” Loki said, sounding disgusted. “Nobody ever tell you to only worry about yourself?”

Steve frowned slightly. Bucky had said something similar once, curt and impatient with how Steve always became so involved with people. Steve worried at his inner cheek. “We don’t have to be friends,” he said, feeling his way, trying to reach out as he had with Bucky. “But maybe we can be…not enemies?”

Loki stood then reached out to grab Steve’s shoulder, propelling him to the full length mirror. “Look,” he bit out, fingers almost cruel on Steve’s shoulder. Steve, careful not to wince, looked. He was clean for the first time in a long time, wearing the new pale blue pjs that had been left on his bed, slightly more scrawny than he’d always been but his skin tanned from the long days he had spent on the sidewalks in late summer, lighter gold stands bleached into his hair. Loki, standing next to him, looked somehow wrong, like they came from different worlds, pale and angular and gaunt, dark hair pinned back behind his ears, shadows dark under contemptuous green eyes.

“We both need a haircut,” Steve said, analytically, looking at the way his hair curled over his ears and down his nape. He almost smiled when the boy at his side let out another exasperated breath, had to duck his head to hide the amusement.

Loki gave him a sharp look, suspecting, then something in him seemed to relent very slightly. Loki, Steve began to see, protected himself with sharp barbed spite and cruel words, rather than the stubborn silence Steve was more familiar with. “You should go back to sleep,” Loki said. “We have to be up at seven.”

Steve nodded, then went back to bed feeling a little less uncertain about his companion.

The next day Steve took his first class with Dr Jane Foster, who taught mathematics. She ignored the snickers from the others when Steve automatically called her “ma’am” and told him he should call her Dr Foster. She was quiet and intense, her brilliance undisguised, patience quickly fading with those who did not try. “You don’t get a pass because you don’t like the subject,” she said, sharp eyes narrowing behind her glasses. “The numbers don’t care if you like them.”

She cared though, beneath the brusque approach. Steve saw that when he caught her glancing at the unsolved rubiks’ cube Clint had left on the desk. She seemed to take it as an unsubtle rejection of her gift and looked briefly hurt. During the lesson, she said something to Clint, too quietly for Steve to catch. Clint grabbed the cube from her and shoved it in his bag, shoulders hunching. Later, during the break, Steve saw Clint under the tree, rubiks cube in his hands again, frustration giving way to determination.

The next class was science. Banner had an unexpected compelling gravitas to his teaching for all his mild-mannered soft-spoken nature. Later, Stark appeared, all sharp smiles and sharper wit, first watching and then joining Banner as they both showed the class how to make things explode in minuscule amounts. Stark gestured expansively with his hands, became more animated as he talked. Steve watched and saw how some of the others reacted to the noise of the explosion, the flash and smoke, how some carefully worked not to flinch. Peter was deliberate in his measurements, asking Banner repeatedly to check he had things right. Clint rolled his eyes behind Peter’s back and Sam snorted under his breath. Wanda wore boredom like a soldered-on mask, dead-eyed and slump-shouldered, while Pietro spoke quickly to disguise a pronounced stutter and Darcy had to be cautioned twice to wear gloves (you’re much too much like me, Stark said). Meanwhile, Loki and Natasha worked at the back in eerie total silence, entirely separate yet in tandem somehow, without once exchanging words or glances.

“Good work,” Banner said warmly as he passed by the two of them, and they lifted their heads, gave him identical perfectly blank expressions.

Steve, who was working with Sam, asked: “I can’t…I don’t get it. Are they…uhm…together? Or do they hate each other?”

Sam shrugged expansively. “Could be both, neither or either. No one knows. We think they might be aliens or clones or something.”

“Natasha’s alright, I think,” said Clint, trying and failing to be offhand. “But Loki? Definitely an alien.”

Peggy, the art teacher, wore bright red lipstick and an easy bright smile that disappeared and became pensive when she held Steve’s sketches in her hands carefully, knowing how pencil smudged. Steve watched her anxiously, noting how her face stilled, became sharper, more intense somehow, before she looked up at him and blinked once. “I don’t need to tell you how good you are,” she said, soberly. “Do I?”

“I want to be better,” he said, quiet enough that only she would hear. He didn’t want to be called a bootlicker; he knew his politeness made him a good candidate.

Peggy gave a small nod of understanding. “I can get you a fixative for this,” she said, then showed him how to use the spray to fix his work. Steve looked around the room with the art supplies and could not believe his own fortune. He touched the brushes gently, felt the quality of the grainy paper. Peggy seemed to understand.

“Take your time and explore,” she said.

Steve thanked her. He was careful to look directly at her eyes, to smile politely and pretend this was not overwhelming him. He did not want to look pitiable in his eagerness.

Soon after, Peggy selected several of Steve’s artworks and asked if she could have them framed and hung somewhere in the house. He had said yes, surprised, and a few days later walked past his own art hanging in the dining room. The science teacher, Banner, had paused in front of a sketch of a cottage near a lake surrounded by beach trees. He smiled at Steve. “It’s beautiful,” he said. “Not just that it looks so real, but that it gives such a feeling of peace.”

Steve, who’d drawn the lake from the memory of the one holiday he’d had with his mother long ago, could only nod because he wasn’t sure his voice would be steady if he spoke. Banner put a hand on his shoulder, and Steve thought he understood.

They picked favourites over dinner. Pepper liked the sketch of seagulls wheeling in the sky, the waves crashing against an empty beach. Tony, when he turned up some time into the meal, pointed to the one of the ferris wheel, dark and dramatic against the setting sun. “That one,” he said, definitively, dropping down into his seat. “That one is amazing.”

“But they’re all good,” said Peter, immediately, instinctively smoothing over a disagreement that wasn’t there, and Steve worried a little that the others would resent him, but those who commented seemed goodnatured, even appreciative, while the others seemed not to care one way or the other.

Privately, things were a little different. “You make it seem easy,” Clint muttered, a few days later, looking over his shoulder at the sketch he was completing. Steve glancing at him, because Clint’s voice was so neutral Steve almost felt the praise was an accusation, as though Steve’s art was some kind of betrayal.

“They’ll want to keep you,” Clint added, after a moment, and Steve felt something in his throat tighten, because Clint was trying to reassure him.

“Have they said they don’t want to keep you?” he asked, carefully, trying to push back against Clint’s unspoken belief.

Clint glowered at him. “I can’t hear properly,” he said. “And I can barely read. And I can’t do anything like…like that,” he jerked his chin at the sketch.

Steve considered him. “I don’t think knowing how to draw is that important to them,” he said, cautiously.

“It helps,” Clint said. He flipped through Steve’s sketch book quickly, moodily, without asking permission, and stopped at one of the sketches Steve had attempted of the house.

“That’s how Coulson got me here,” Steve said, after a moment. “The house.” He ran his fingers over the newly protected sketch, now able to trail his fingers over the lines without smudging them, keeping their edges. “It looks like…”

“Some rich person’s too big to live in home,” Clint finished for him, caustic, rejecting wistfulness.

Steve looked at him. “Yeah,” he said softly, and did not say what they both knew: people like them did not belong in places like this. Steve hesitated. “Maybe…”

Clint’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t,” he said. “I don’t need to hear that.” It was hope that Clint did not need, Steve realised. Hope that he felt would destroy him — destroy them. Steve inclined his head, and waited. As he suspected, the silence coaxed more from his truculent new friend. “They’re just doing their good deed, to make up for all the bad. To make them feel better about being born with silver spoons in their mouths. Sooner or later, they will give up on us all,” Clint said. “We need to be ready.”

Steve took a slow long breath. “But until then?”

Clint gave a shrug. “Might as well eat their bread rolls.”

 

“Well?” Pepper asked her friend and one-time fellow law-student softly. “What do you think?”

Peggy tilted her head in that way she had, bright eyes thoughtful. “You’re not asking about his art,” she said, not quite a question. They were standing just outside the studio, the door ajar, the sound of Brahms faintly audible. Steve, Peggy had discovered, shared her love of classical music. Either that or he was doing some research and pretending to love what she loved to keep on her good side. It was very difficult to tell with him.

“No,” Pepper confirmed. She glanced into the studio, watched as Steve briefly rested his forehead in his hand, blonde head bent studiously over his work. Peggy had asked if she could tutor him during his free time, and Steve had gone to Pepper to ask permission, so earnest and careful and polite it made her heart ache for him.

It worried her that he was still coughing — even now as she watched he turned his head to the side, a dry and racking coughing fit shaking his frame. It took him some time to recover, before he picked up his charcoal again. She turned back to her friend. “He won’t let me take him to have that cough checked out. He told me its fine, that he’s asthmatic and its sometimes worse than others.”

Peggy gave a slight nod, made a “hmm” sound. “You know why, don’t you?”

“Yes. He…doesn’t want to be any bother. When I offered to tutor him, he said he was worried it would be too much trouble for me.”

Pepper sighed. “Try to make him see reason?” she said.

“Of course l’ll try. But you know it will take time.”

“It always does,” said Pepper, and cast another glance at the still figure, intent on his still life.

 

Steve had never been much good at sports. When he’d been at school, he was always the last to be picked for the teams. He wasn’t sure that things would be much different here. At first he thought Wanda, who was like him small and pale and a little sickly-looking, would not be enthusiastic about physical activity, but to his surprise she had joined in the warm up with frenetic energy and was now bouncing around the court chasing the ball like everyone else.

He glanced around at the others. They seemed to have no difficulty following the instructions, the squeaks of their trainers filling the gym hall as they panted and ran around with apparent enjoyment, all trying to get their hands on the ball. Darcy was currently jumping and shouting and waving her arms, Pietro was busily running up and down, Clint and Sam were battling for control of the ball, Peter stood guarding the goal with fierce concentration, and even Natasha, standing at the other end between the goal posts, was taking part with a seriousness that seemed all out of proportion to the activity.

Only Loki stood slightly to the side, moving in a desultory fashion when the teacher, a big blonde man called Thor, looked in his direction.

Steve did his best but knew he wasn’t doing enough, had to pause at one point to put his hands on his knees, pull in lungfuls of air. He tensed up when Thor paused play and walked over to him, feeling as though everyone was turning around to look. “Are you ok, Steve?” Thor asked, looking worried.

Steve straightened and flushed. “Yes. I’m fine.”

Thor frowned. “You’re asthmatic, right? Do you have your inhaler?”

Steve nodded, gulped, tried to control his breathing. To his surprise, Sam stepped up next to him protectively and Loki, who had not been too far away, drifted closer.

“Maybe you should take a seat?” Thor suggested. “Sam can help you back to…”

“He said he was fine,” Loki interrupted, almost sharply.

Thor raised his brows, then glanced at Steve. “Alright,” he said, and his tone was gentle now, almost apologetic. “But let me know if you want to take a break, okay?”

Steve nodded. “Yes sir,” he said. When Thor blew his whistle to let play resume, Loki immediately moved back to his position. Steve turned to Sam. “Thanks,” he said.

Sam shrugged. “Didn’t do anything,” he said. “But if you want…”

“If I want?”

“Me and Pietro like to run sometimes. You could join us?”

Steve thought about this, about the potential embarrassment of them having to wait for him, to adjust their pace and slow down and wait for him to recover his breath.

“Or just us two,” Sam suggested. “I’ll be your trainer. And you could teach me to draw?”

“I’d like that,” Steve said. “Thank you.”

Sam nodded and jogged back to join Clint, who was sweaty and red-faced and looked, for the first time Steve had seen him, almost happy.

Steve couldn’t understand liking running around for no purpose, but maybe he would like it better when he was better at running. For the first time that he could remember, he did not feel so bad about not being strong enough. And, Steve thought, Loki had stood up for him just because he’d seen Steve was being put on the spot. He couldn’t yet call Loki friend perhaps, but it seemed they were on their way to being not enemies. And that too felt good. Like he was close to belonging here, with these people.

 

History class was taught by a bearded long-haired man who said they should call him Hogun. He talked to them about the Roman empire, legionaries and something called lorica hamata. He’d brought in some weaponry and armour to show them.

Steve surreptitiously opened his sketchbook and began sketching the lines of weapons. “That’s really good,” Clint said, just as Hogun appeared suddenly behind them. “Perhaps we should leave the art lesson for some other time?” Hogun said.

Steve swept away the sketch book, embarrassed at being caught. “Sorry, sir,” he said, flushing and thought for a moment he saw Natasha smile, but not in a smirking, mocking way, just a quick smile that showed a glimmer of who she was beneath the careful mask.

At the end of the lesson, Hogun said they could take a closer look at the weapons and chain mail armor. When it came to his turn, Steve struggled to even lift the bundle of chain mail. Clint reached out, “Here,” he said, with an off-hand air, lowering the heavy chinking armor onto Steve, who would have stumbled under its weight if not for Sam’s steadying hand under his elbow. “Oh,” Steve said, looking down at himself, his scrawny body somehow less weak-looking under the heavy dull metal links, the uniform of warriors.

“You look badass,” said Clint, with no hint of mockery.

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. He looked around, grabbed the shield. “Here, hold this. We’ll take a photo.”

Nat smiled again, more fully, and Steve thought this was what it must be like to have friends.

Ms Potts asked Steve to come to her office after dinner that day, and asked him to bring his sketchbook. He imagined standing before her desk, and his stomach knotted up painfully, not knowing why she wanted to see him. He was surprised when he entered the office that it was more of a comfortable sitting room, with the desk tucked away under the window. Ms Potts was sitting in an armchair in the corner with a little folding table. “Come, sit,” she said, and Steve joined her, drawing forward a cushiony chair on the other side of the table He joined her, waiting tensely. She tilted her head, examining him. “Its been a week since you came to Plumfield.”

He nodded.

“How are you feeling?”

“Good,” he said, monosyllabic, uncertain.

“I’m…still concerned about that cough. Would you mind if I booked an appointment for you?”

Steve tensed. “I can’t…” he started, awkwardly. Charity, like debt, left a bitter feeling in Steve’s mouth. His cough would get better, eventually. It was sometimes better than this.

She rescued him from having to explain. “You understand that this is why we exist?” When he said nothing, she reached out to him, touched his shoulder carefully. “Please, let me do my job, Steve.” 

He hesitated, then gave a brief nod, was rewarded by the flicker of her smile.

She wrote something down. He glanced at the paper, as though he could somehow read what she’d written so hastily, upside down and in small print. He shifted, wondering if they were done, when she glanced down at his sketchbook.

“Will you show me the art you’ve been working on? Peggy is very pleased with your progress,” she said.

He opened the sketchbook, flicked through the last few pages, the studies that Peggy had asked him to work on, details of shadow and light achieved through nothing more than the press of graphite on grainy paper, the soft watercolours full of the sky and the water and the fields.

“They’re beautiful,” Ms Potts said, like she really meant it, and of course he flushed, embarrassed and pleased at the praise. 

Later that day, there was a tap on his door.   “Coming for a run this evening?” Sam said.

Steve closed the sketchbook.“Yes. Yes, thanks. And…art tomorrow?”

Sam nodded. “Yes. I think I’m finally getting that vanishing point thing right.”

Soon after, Sam completed his drawing of a plane in mid flight, and Peggy had paused and looked at it with that glow of happiness she got when something was going well, and clapped her hands, and told him he should get the sketch framed. A week later, Sam’s framed signed sketch hung on the wall next to Steve’s art.

 

The evening sun softened and warmed the stone walls. Steve sat beneath the tree with his sketch pad and worked on the details of the clustering ivy covering the south wall, the way the leaves wove together, rippling, intertwined…

“That’s very good,” said a familiar voice from behind him.

Steve looked up at Coulson. He was dressed in an expensive-looking suit, charcoal grey, only the tie was slightly loosened.

Steve went to stand, but Coulson shook his head, smiled. “I wouldn’t want to interrupt.”

Steve hesitated. “You’re not,” he said, awkwardly, but somehow as close as he could get to saying everything he wanted to say.

Coulson looked briefly surprised, then pleased. “May I then?” he asked, gesturing.

When Steve nodded uncertainly, Coulson, not caring about his expensive suit, sat down on the grass next to him. Steve waited for a moment, expecting a careful questioning session, perhaps an off hand “Settling in?” or “A week on — what do you think?” or even “so how are you getting on?” But Coulson only leaned back against the tree and was quiet, waiting until Steve once again began to sketch the house, to loose himself in how to transfer the complex impossible detail of the leaves against the stone. It was easier than Steve had expected, to work with the comfortable quiet of the day drawing towards night, with Coulson leaning against the tree and tipping his head back, looking up at fading sunlight filtered through the shade.

Steve was not sure how long it was before Coulson stirred from his half-sleep, and stretched hugely. “I’m going in to see Pepper,” he said, once he had dusted himself off, righted his clothes.

Steve hesitated, then closed his sketch pad. “I’ll come with you,” he said. “The light’s going anyway.”

They walked up to the house together. When they were a few steps away, Steve stopped and said, suddenly: “Clint thinks this is temporary.” The words were blurted out despite himself, revealing an unwelcome quaver in his voice that would have made him cringe if he was not holding his breath for the answer.

Coulson paused and glanced at him. “Not entirely surprising,” he said. “Clint’s only had temporariness in his life.”

Steve swallowed. “But do you…do you…”

Coulson rescued him. “Do I think he is right?”

Steve gave a nod, then opened his mouth, found the words tripping out. “Clint said it was guilt that made them do this. Because of their past, because they’re rich and she was a prosecutor and he made weapons…”

Coulson frowned slightly. “And so he thinks…you think…that they will get rid of you once they have worked out that guilt?”

Steve hesitated. “They’re not…we’re not…some of us are not getting better.”

“You think they will become frustrated,” Coulson interpreted.

“Yes,” said Steve.

Coulson walked a few steps without saying anything. “I don’t believe they will, but I don’t think I can convince you otherwise.” He glanced at Steve. “Why don’t you stick around and try them?”

Steve thought about this, looked at the house that looked like nowhere he could ever call home, but that he wanted to call home. “Maybe I will,” he said.

**Author's Note:**

> This started off as a snippet in which Steve turns up at a Plumfield run mostly single-handedly by Pepper.
> 
> If you've read the book, you might have guessed that Steve is Nat. The others don't really fit into any particular role, though I think Clint might be a slightly less happy Tommy. Oh, and Loki might be Emil? 
> 
> There are some very brief mentions of Bucky here, as someone Steve got to know on the streets. Again, if you're familiar with the books, you'll recognise Dan. I have no plans to continue this right now but if inspiration strikes at some point in the future, Bucky/Dan will probably be making an appearance.


End file.
